A Terrible Imposition, That Sex Thing

So this Monday's XKCD made me happy:



The "Porn for Women" under discussion is a series of calendars and day planners put out by the Cambridge Women's Porn Collective, and it's available on their sugary, paternalistic, condescending website, if for some reason you feel like being treated like a child. If you hadn't guessed, as a woman, I'm angered and offended by this crap. It makes me equal parts nauseated and furious.

I'm a woman, all right. And I enjoy sex. And because of things like this, it's hard for me to admit, even to myself, how much I enjoy it. Being told that "women's pornography" shouldn't contain any actual sex is being told that women shouldn't enjoy sex--they should enjoy looking at (but not touching!) pretty men doing housework and offering purely platonic affection. And at least once in every collection, saying "Let's NOT have sex."

Digest that for a moment. "Pornography" for women is hot guys saying they don't want to have sex.

DOES. NOT. COMPUTE.

Seriously. I have a lot of fantasies, but a guy with abs I could grate cheese on saying he doesn't want to fuck me is somewhere near the bottom of the list.

The thing about this is, the idea that women don't like sex? That really messes people up when they want to have sex. If you want to have sex with a woman and she is expressing only tepid interest? If all you know about women is that they don't really want to have sex, a reluctant yes may seem like the only yes you'll get. If the idea that a woman "allows" men to have sex with her is the only one you have, a lot of things start making more sense--like nagging her until she lets you, like pushing her past her comfort zone, like taking advantage of her when she's too intoxicated to really say no.

And even if you don't think that a tepid yes is the best you'll get, there's the other feeling--the feeling that this fantastic thing you want to do, the thing that feels really good and you want to do as often as you can, is a terrible, horrible imposition that your girlfriend is just giving into in order to be nice.

I think that we do need to take pornography back from being a word that conjures up the most tasteless, lowest-common-denominator fake tits and big dicks downloads. People like different things in their porn--some of them even like housework. But we shouldn't assume that women are such different creatures from men that none of their pornography can have sex in it.

Transcript of the XKCD strip:

Panel 1: Woman sits at computer, typing an email: "To the authors of Porn for Women: Your book features pictures of hot, clothed guys cooking, doing laundry, and vacuuming.

Panel 2: Email continues: "The idea seems to be that my deepest fantasies, like the rest of my life, likely revolve around housework."

Panel 3: Email continues: "So I wanted to write in to clarify: In my porn,"

Panel 4: Email continues: "People FUCK."

Some Questions and Answers

I won't say "FAQ" because it certainly isn't "Frequently." But for those of you who may be wondering:

Q. Why a feminist blog about men's issues?

A. My answer to this one has to come from two different directions. A lot of men might be wondering what relevance feminism has to their life, and why the heck they should be listening to a feminist about men. To that, my answer is: Feminism isn't just about women. Feminism can also be about how we think about gender in general, and how men and women behave because of how they've been taught to see proper men and women. It's about role models for gender, stereotyping, and how these ideas can help us or hurt us. And feminism can also be about how making one kind of man the ideal leaves very little room for anyone else, and how that hurts all of us.

Now, why a feminist blog about men's issues? Feminism is focused, as the name suggests, on the issues facing women. And because of society's structural inequality--a theme this blog is going to come back to, I can assure you--women's issues normally don't get a lot of attention, or are brushed off as non-serious. In order to combat this inequality feminist blogs, conferences, books, and speakers have to push as hard as they can in the other direction. Unfortunately, that means in feminist spaces, talking about men's issues is taking away from the attention on women's issues. There are only so many hours in the day and so much energy someone can put into a blog, after all--and most feminists get sick enough hearing about nothing but men's issues on the television and the radio and in the newspaper and in most mainstream blogs that they don't want to spend a lot of time on men in their own space.

Feminist blogs, to put it another way, are optimized for one job--and as a result, there aren't many places for talking about men's issues in a specifically feminist way--a way that seeks to talk about the structure of oppression we're dealing with, and explore it in more ways than just a few paragraphs talking about how the misogyny inherent in the system is really insulting to men who like women. This is an attempt to make a spot for that conversation; a blog for talking about how sexism hurts men, too.

Q. Isn't that like saying we need a blog to talk about how racism hurts white people, too?

A. Er, yeah. Except that I honestly don't think we're as far along in talking about race in this society as we are in talking about gender. Also, as a white person I'm a little uncomfortable starting that conversation.

Q. In your intro post, you mentioned we live in "a world basically defined by creepy and unfortunate gender roles". But my life is much less defined by my gender role than my race/disability/income and class/citizenship/internet access! What gives?

A. Some of us are going to be more defined by our gender than others--and all of those things are definitely affecting all of us, whether we notice it or not. (Technically, some of us are defined by our ableism rather than our disability.) All of these things mentioned have been used to oppress people. They all intersect in our lives in different ways, and really they all deserve mention.

However! I am but one blogger. I'll do my best to try and address issues from different angles--the way that masculinity and everything else intersects is fascinating and telling--but my focus is going to be on gender issues. I have not forgotten that there are other things going on in people's lives, but there's enough to talk about regarding gender as is.

Q. So why do we need a woman to tell us about men?

A. Sometimes it's nice to have an outside view. As a woman my life is impacted by masculinity a lot, it turns out. And I like men, and keep hearing about these misconceptions about how men think women conceptualize them. Hopefully by starting the conversation we can clear some of that up.

Q. Are you going to spend all your time insulting men on this blog? As a man, when I go onto feminist blogs they spend all their time telling me I'm an idiot who can't read and I get sick of that really fast.

A. Feminist blogs get concern-trolled a lot. A lot. I'm going to try and go slow and define terms and do a lot of linking to Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog. I'm not going to expect the audience for this blog to be immediately familiar with terms like "male privilege" which are de riguer in feminist circles but sound like you're accusing someone of being born with a 42-karat-gold penis out in the wider world. I am, however, going to expect readers to... y'know, engage with the arguments.

Q. What's your comment policy going to be?

A. Let's see what shakes out as we get more traffic. But I'm definitely going to state that this is not going to be a safe space. I don't want anyone coming in to a comment thread expecting that hurtful questions about women, rape, sexual assault, homosexuality, race, disability, genderqueer issues, or anything else that is triggering are going to be moderated out. That's not the goal right now and I don't want to misrepresent this place.

Also, I'm sorta trying to figure out the comment moderation as I go. Baby steps!

Welcome!

This is the future home of Fish Bikes Wanted, a feminist blog focusing on men and the issues that men face in a world basically defined by creepy and unfortunate gender roles. We're going to look at how the patriarchy screws over all of us--and how applying feminist theories of deconstructing gender roles can help figure out how to get out of this particular mess. We'll also laugh at bad movies.

The name of the blog comes from a quote often attributed to Gloria Steinem, but actually from Irina Dunn: "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." As a heterosexual woman, I have to say--I may not need a man, but I sure do enjoy wanting them sometimes.

Shortly: content, what we're doing here, why we're here, and the way commercials make men look stupid. What's up with that?